Archive for July 19th, 2010

The readers may see what the people of the United States had to suffer after the war of 1812, we quote the following from Benton‘s “Thirty Years in the United States Senate.” He says:

Senator Thomas H. Benton

The years of 1819 and 1820 were a period of gloom and agony. No money, either gold or silver; no paper convertible into specie; no measure or standard of value left remaining. The local banks (all but those of New England) after a brief resumption of specie payments, again sank into a state of suspension. The Bank of the United States, created as a remedy for all these evils, now at the head of evil, prostrate and helpless, with no power left but that of suing its debtors and selling their property, and purchasing for itself at its own nominal price. No price for property or produce; no sale but those of the Sheriff and the Marshal; no purchasers at the execution-sales but the creditor, or some hoarder of money; no employment for industry; no demand for labor; no sale for the products of the farm; no sound of the hammer, but that of the auctioneer, knocking down property. Stop laws, property laws, replevin laws, the intervention of the legislature between the creditor and the debtor — this was the business of legislation in three-fourths of the States of the Union — of all south and west of New England. No medium of exchange, even, but little bits of foul paper, marked so many cents, and signed by some tradesman, barber, or inn-keeper; exchanges deranged to the extent of fifty or one hundred per cent. Distress the universal cry of the people; relief, the universal demand, thundered at the door of all Legislatures, State and Federal.

Now read the above and then mark the comparison between those good old Democratic times and the present. How do you like the contrast?

A very remarkable crime was committed in this city this evening. A boy of twelve years, with a precocious fiendishness which could scarcely be equalled by Jesse Pomeroy himself deliberately and in cold blood shot down and instantly killed a young playmate and companion of his own age. The affair has created the greatest excitement in the neighborhood in which it occurred, and hundreds of volunteers are helping the police to capture the youthful assassin, who cannot long evade arrest. The circumstances of the crime, as told by the young lads who witnessed it, seem to be as follows:

Robert McAdams, aged 12 years, whose parents live on a small street called Cambria street, near Lehigh avenue, was playing with six or eight other boys on Broad street, near the avenue, shortly after six this evening. McAdams had a piece of candy, which he was munching, when one of his playmates, Charles Parkman, aged 12 years, demanded a piece of the candy. McAdams refused. Thereupon Parkman said that if he did not give him some he would shoot him. McAdams still refused, and laughed, not dreaming apparently that Parkman was earnest in his threat.

Parkman then, without further warning, deliberately drew from his pocket a small, cheap revolver, and advancing close to his little companion, placed the muzzle near his forehead and fired. The boy dropped to the pavement and died almost instantly, with a bullet in his brain. The young assassin dropped his pistol and fled as his victim expired, the youthful witnesses having been too nearly paralyzed with surprise and fear to interfere.

Parkman, the boy murderer, has not yet been captured, but he probably will be before morning. He is said to have a very bad reputation in the neighborhood and to be generally regarded as a bad boy. His parents are neighbors of the McAdams people, and both families are respectable people in humble circumstances.